Motivated by recent observations of chiral-induced magnetization and spin-selective transport we studied the effect of chiral molecules on conventional BCS superconductors. By applying scanning tunneling spectroscopy, we demonstrate that the singlet-pairing s-wave order parameter of Nb is significantly altered upon adsorption of chiral polyalanine alpha-helix molecules on its surface. The tunneling spectra exhibit zero-bias conductance peaks embedded inside gaps or gap-like features, suggesting the emergence of unconventional triplet-pairing components with either d-wave or p-wave symmetry, as corroborated by simulations. These results may open a way for realizing simple superconducting spintroinics devices.
@article{arxiv.1612.02239,
title = {Unconventional superconductivity induced in Nb films by adsorbed chiral molecules},
author = {H. Alpern and E. Katzir and S. Yochelis and N. Katz and Y. Paltiel and O. Millo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.02239},
year = {2016}
}